A Chic Streeterville Stadium

November 24, 1985|By Jim Hedegard. Chicagoan Jim Hedegard is a professor of management at Roosevelt University.

In considering sites for Chicago`s proposed sports stadium, the city has ignored one that solves not the need for a modern facility in which the professional teams can play, but other nagging municipal problems as well. The site I am suggesting is the block bounded by North Michigan Avenue, Chicago Avenue, Seneca Street and Pearson Street. Were the stadium cantilevered out above Chicago and Pearson, the site is just large enough.

A stadium there would have almost too many positive features to enumerate:

1. It would enhance the image of Chicago, now known nationally as a city of gangsters and bozos. We are gangsters, but a stadium on the upscale Near North Side would attract and cater to the upper crust. Anyone watching a national telecast would say, ``Well, they don`t look like bozos!``

2. The neighbors would not complain about night baseball. How can anyone living in the Streeterville, Magnificent Mile and Rush Street areas complain about noise and lights at night?

3. There would be no parking problems. The stadium would, of course, feature valet parking. Professional Rush Street car-hikers would easily dispose of 15,000 cars in an evening without causing any inconvenience to local residents.

4. Michigan and Chicago may be the most accessible site in the metropolitan area. It is convenient via subway, buses, taxis and--alone among major league stadia--horse-drawn carriages.

5. Food service and souvenirs could be unique and memorable. Imagine hot dogs from D.B. Kaplan`s and fish and chips from the Chestnut Street Grill. Imagine rice-paper scorecards from Rizzoli`s, Harris tweed baseball caps from Marshall Field`s, and kidskin miniature footballs from Neiman-Marcus.

6. The site comes with built-in ``sky boxes.`` Rooms in the Ritz-Carlton and Carriage House and condos in Olympia Tower would in fact overlook the field.

7. Many events other than baseball and football games could be scheduled at this location. Polo matches could be moved here, as well as large cotillions, luxury car demolition derbies (imagine Rolls Royce versus Cadillac, rather than Camaro versus Charger), charity auctions, C.D. Peacock warehouse clearance sales, purebred dog shows, etc.

8. Although postgame littering outside the stadium could not be eliminated, the litter at least would be upscale. Few locals would mind Chestnut Street Grill fish wrappers on their sidewalks, and who wouldn`t prefer empty ceramic-stoppered Grolsch bottles to crushed styrofoam Old Style or Bud cups?

9. The Michigan-Chicago site also would solve the ``What to do with Navy Pier?`` problem. Putting the stadium at Michigan and Chicago will require moving of the Water Tower Pumping Station.

We seem to have to have something in the lake and it probably doesn`t really matter what we put there. It might as well be the pumping station. So, tear down the pier!

If we simply must save the pier, we could relocate the pumping station on the bottom of Lake Michigan about a mile offshore. It would then look exactly like the little castles one puts in the bottom of a fishbowls. Tourists could visit it via Wendella & Mercury submarines, or the USS Silversides could be saved from loss to the state of Michigan by being pressed into such service.

Given these advantages for a ``Magnificent Mile Dome,`` I can`t see how near South Side or West Side locations can be seriously considered.